The Healing Of A Boy With An Evil Spirit
THE HEALING OF A BOY WITH AN EVIL SPIRIT
LUKE 9:37-45
From the dear Son, we come down to earth to another dear son. The disciples had the power but everyone lacked the faith.
The chill world of difficulty and defeat was waiting at the mountain’s foot. Mark tells the story a little more fully, and it appears that the nine men who had not shared the journey up Hermon were the center of a curious crowd which included some of the religious leaders of Caesarea Philippi. The district was strongly Gentile in character, but also had a large Jewish population who watched with critical or interested eyes the doings of Christ.
The epileptic boy, like the blind man at the gate (John 9:2), was a theological problem to the disciples, a case for exhibition, not a spectacle of dire need and an object for sacrificial love. Hence their helplessness. It is not difficult to gather a crowd, and those who have a flair for doing so too commonly meet the crowd at its own level, set themselves in the center of the stage and dissipate real usefulness.
Mark tells the story at greater length, for Peter, Mark’s informant, must have been deeply impressed by the spectacle of need and failure. Luke’s briefer account still catches the dull tone of the stricken father’s hopelessness. There is little in earthly pain to match the agony of a parent over the affliction of a beloved child. Let those called thus to suffer hold fast to the thought that in such experience they touch the edge of the love of God. The thought of God’s suffering is an awesome one. The hymn is surely wrong which says: “No trouble, nor sorrow, nor care, Lord, hast thou.” It is enough for us to remember that God was “in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”
The man sought Christ in his distress, and found the church. In one he should, no doubt, have found the other, but too often, in the common scene, the church stands in the way. Like too many, the man saw that the church was helpless to aid him in his dire need, and imagined that Christ too was unable to help him.
Notes 9:41: “perverse”—see also Acts 20:30; Philippians 2:15. 9:42: again Luke thinks of the family—cf. 7:15. 9:43-44: “said” repeatedly: see Mark 9:31.
Prayer
Help us, Lord and Master,
not to hide thee from our fellows,
and blunt the aspirations of those who seek or need thee
by our dullness, impotence and self-esteem.